The economics and politics of instability, empire, and energy, with a focus on Latin America and the Caribbean, plus other random blather and my wonderful wonderful wife. And I’d like a cigar right now.

April 24, 2009

Observatorio Argentino 11: The new broadcasting law

OK, I've been making a lot of fun of the idea that Argentina is run by a dictator and an enemy of the United States. Obviously, neither is true.

But a new law proposed by President Cristina Fernández raises some interesting issues. She proposes to limit the the number of broadcast licenses that a single firm can hold, and allow telecoms companies to operate cable television networks. The law would also reserve a third of broadcast frequencies for nonprofit groups such as universities, and set minimum quotas for Argentine films, music and programs. (Her meeting with the movie-makers is pictured.)

I don't have any ideological problem with limits on the number of media outlets that any one person or entity can control ... but I might be wrong on that. Are there dangers that I don't see? This proposal seems pretty openly aimed at Grupo Clarín, which is a big critic of the president. In addition, about a year ago she proposed to establish a government watchdog that would call out media bias, although nothing appears to have come of it.

Comments

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Depends on what the market is.

In the US, Rupert Murdoch controls a lot of stuff in New York City (two (maybe three) newspapers, and two cable networks); network consolidation posed a problem in the run-up to the Iraq War in the US, and has in the crash (the overleveraged Tribune Company, the NYT Company).

That said, I'm not entirely sure what the answer is. Instinctively, I'd want never to give anyone the Murdoch exemption again in the US, though it's rapidly going to become difficult to distinguish and determine markets, if we end up at a convergence of internet and tv in the way that seems at least plausible, thus making the cap on owning x number of outlets in any one market less important than it had been previously.

Given that, unlike the US, Argentina has had period of...difficulty in its democratic governance (though the Bush Decade probably counts as a Lost Decade, but more on that in ten years), I feel as if giving the government power to finger-wag at media "bias" is probably not for the best, but whatever regime that's arranged needs to be both anti-trust and defend against hte infringement of the government. So, something like Canada's system and something like the US system, I guess; though I don't place much stock in the FCC, given how perverted its become.

The media concentration law does sound like a good idea to me--Berlusconi media monopoly hasn't done good things for Italian democracy, and I'm half-convinced that Conrad Black might have wanted to do the same thing in Canada if not for his becoming a felon with foreign citizenship.

The media-bias law is something else entirely; NGOs can do a more credible job than a government agency, I think.